Noam Chomsky

The documents of Japanese fascists are just overflowing with loving kindness…when they were carrying out huge massacres in China they were bringing an “earthly paradise” to China and protecting the people from the ‘bandits’ who were trying to undermine it and so on and so forth.

For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of ‘brainwashing under freedom’ to which we are subjected and which all too often we serve as willing or unwitting instruments.

Of course all such conclusions about appropriate actions against the rich and powerful are based on a fundamental flaw: This is us, and that is them. This crucial principle, deeply embedded in Western culture, suffices to undermine even the most precise analogy and the most impeccable reasoning.

I do not feel that we should set up people as ‘models’; rather actions, thoughts, principles.

In the US, there is basically one party – the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to these policies. As is most of the population.

But you really have to think through the talk about nonviolence. Sure, everybody’s in favor of nonviolence rather than violence, but under what conditions and when? Is it an absolute principle?

I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me.

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.

The United States is not only the strongest, but also the most terrified country.

Russia does not want confrontation of any kind. And we will not take part in any kind of ‘holy alliance.’

The goal of Socialism is Communism.

A basic principle of modern state capitalism is that costs and risks are socialized to the extent possible, while profit is privatized.

The system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.

United we stand, divided we fall is one of the oldest and truest slogans of the Labour movement.

It appears, our partners thought that this would never affect them, this counterproductive politics of restrictions and sanctions. But now we are seeing that this is happening.

Stalin is the most popular figure in all of Russia.

Passivity may be the easy course, but it is hardly the honorable one.

I am not an admirer or supporter of Putin’s foreign policy, or of Russian or anybody else’s expansion.- Jeremy Corbyn

We don’t say that three-year-olds are lying if they say they saw a dragon outside, or an actor in a play. It’s also not clear that it’s tactically useful to tot up the random falsehoods that pepper [Trump’s] tweets and orations.

Much of the world must be astonished-if they are not collapsing in laughter-while watching the performances in high places and in media concerning Russian efforts to influence an American election, a familiar US government specialty as far back as we choose to trace the practice.